As a result of the changing notions of work schools are increasingly acknowledging that they have a strong responsibility to guide students not only in their academic growth, but also in their career development. This paper presents the result of a study about effects of teachers training on career dialogue promoting career competency development in students. For the quantitative part of the study, a quasi experimental research design is used to measure effects among 2500 students. Video-recordings of conversations are used for qualitative research. The results show only when the off-the-job training is followed by on-the-job coaching, the professionalizing proves to be effective on student level: students notice that the guidance conversations are more appreciative, reflective and activating and are about self image development, work and career actions. Also the observation on guidance conversations show that the conversations are more career related.
Saxion is part of the Dutch system of universities for higher vocational training and applied sciences. In this paper a case study is presented to gain more insight in spin offs of these types of universities, and their effect on the regional economy. For this purpose a database of 152 spin offs has been developed and a first survey was analysed. Most spin offs are active in the ICT and business services sectors. We have compared the results with the spin offs University of Twente. We observed that the percentage of spin offs, which was located outside the surrounding region of Saxion (33%) was significantly higher, than the percentage of spin off of the University of Twente (22%). The spin offs outside the region also have employees than Saxion spin off in the region. There is however no difference in the way the spin off perceive the business climate of their location. Stimulating entrepreneurship at universities of applied seems a good strategy to support the development of the promising knowledge intensive service sector in the eastern part of the |Netherlands. On the other hand this strategy should be accompanied with policy instruments aiming at convincing alumni entrepreneurs to stay in the region.
MULTIFILE
More and more municipalities are, fortunately, working on play-friendly public spaces. However, many policy visions and investments are still based on assumptions made by municipal officials or suppliers of play equipment.
LINK
